Air mattresses of the type described above are well known. German Patent Publication 3,303,615 (Hobbensiefken) published on Aug. 9, 1984 discloses an air mattress which has about 200 cells of standardized size. For this purpose a casing of synthetic material is provided with a correspondingly large number of pockets into which individual inflatable air cells are inserted. The casing has the insertion openings for the individual air cells and additional openings to save material. The individual cells may have various shapes including bellows shapes. By individually inflating each of these cells that can be taken out of the casing it is possible to enable the mattress to adapt its surface configuration easily to different body shapes of different users.
German Patent Publication DE 4,101,781 A1 (Kolb) published on Jul. 23, 1992 discloses an air mattress in which a casing itself is divided into a plurality of chambers. These chambers are also individually inflatable and thus are adaptable to the user's body configuration.
The above described air mattresses do not permit an air exchange between neighboring air cells or chambers, whereby the adaptation of the air cells or chambers to the body shape of the user depends solely on the different degrees of inflating the cells and chambers. Thus, such structures leave room for improvement especially with regard to making an air mattress more comfortable than was possible heretofore. The just described air mattresses also do not provide any venting, for example in order to let moisture escape when the user is perspiring.
German Patent Publication DE 2,516,539 (Herbst) published on Oct. 28, 1976 discloses air pressurized upholstery cores, for example, for bed mattresses. A casing formed of a foam material has individual inflatable rubber cells embedded in the foam material. The rubber cells are interconnected by an air channel that connects the air cells in series. The size of the air cells shall vary throughout the foam rubber core in order to provide again an adaptation to the various body shapes of a user. The individual cells may also have different configurations, for example, a cubic shape or a star shape, whereby these shapes are to be interconnected at their corners or tips in such a way that the air can travel from one cube to the other or from one star-shaped configuration to the other.
East German Patent Publication 76,326 (Meyer), published on Aug. 5, 1972 discloses an inflatable air mattress divided into a plurality of sections each of which is further divided into a multitude of air cells that are separated from each other by welding seams (18), but interconnected by channels not shown. Each field is individually inflatable through nipples (15, 16). The fields are separated by strips that are not inflatable so that the air mattress can be folded. Inflatable air cells (19) are positioned at the corners of the larger square air cells (1).
German Utility Model DE-U-1,873,725 (Cecioni), published on Apr. 17, 1963 disloses an inflatable air mattress wherein a multitude of cells is connected in series and individual mattress sections are insertable into a foam rubber casing in which the air mattress sections form a core. Venting holes are provided between neighboring air cells without communicating with these air cells.
The above discussed publications leave room for improvement especially with regard to a rapid inflation and deflation as well as with an adaptation of individual mattress areas to desired degrees of hardness.